Employment Transit Access

Desired Trend

Current Trend

Definition

Percent of jobs within 1/4 mile of a transit stop

Why is it Important?

Public transit benefits everyone in the community, even people who never ride it. Public transit reduces congestion on roads, which saves time and reduces fuel costs for those who drive. Public transit also enables workers to get to their jobs, allows workers to access a broader range of job opportunities, and increases the labor pool for businesses, all of which supports the economy. Access to work is an important indicator of the efficacy of the transit system, because the most common destination for public transit trips is work.1 This indicator provides a measure of the percent of jobs that have the potential to be accessed by transit.2 The ¼ mile distance used in the measure corresponds to a convenient 10 minute walking time.

How are we Doing?

In the St. Louis region, 68.6 percent of jobs are located within ¼ mile of a transit stop as of January 2017. This is about the same as in 2011 when an estimated 69.2 percent of jobs were within ¼ mile of a transit stop. In 2017, around 808,000 of 1.2 million jobs are considered transit accessible. Although the percentage of total jobs that are transit accessible is about the same in 2011 and 2017, the number of transit accessible jobs increased by 4.2 percent. The total number of jobs in the region increased by 5.0 percent over the same time period.3 As shown on the map, jobs near the center of the region are much more likely to be accessible by transit.

Geographic Level

St. Louis eight county bi-state region, including Franklin, Jefferson, St. Charles and St. Louis counties and city of St. Louis in Missouri and Madison, Monroe and St. Clair counties in Illinois. View map.

2Transit stops for this indicator include bus and MetroLink stops for Metro Transit, bus stops for the St. Charles Area Transit system, and bus stops for the Madison County Transit (MCT) system. For years prior to 2014, this indicator was calculated using the full length of bus routes for MCT. MCT used a flag stop system in which passengers could get on or off the bus at any intersection. As of 2014 MCT transitioned to designated bus stops.

3The baseline year for this indicator is 2011. No comparable historical data is available, and current data is not yet available.

Data Sources

Dun & Bradstreet, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and East-West Gateway Council of Governments